


green-eyed monster

by nigoi



Category: Peter Pan & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, But Hogwarts Does Not Actually Appear, Canon-Typical Sexism, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 21:40:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18747646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nigoi/pseuds/nigoi
Summary: A story told in seven summers.Wendy was just crossing the gates of the bar when she saw a light. At first, she thought it was just a figment of her imagination, but when it flashed two, three, four times, she knew what it was what she was seeing.A fairy!If she had said it out loud, it would have been a gasp.





	green-eyed monster

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is dedicated to P****, as always <3

**I**

The first time that Wendy remembers seeing Peter Pan, it goes like this: 

She had been unfairly punished by her loving parents, Mr. And Mrs. Darling, for not getting excellent grades at school. After a good spanking, Mr Darling ignores his wife’s pleas and locks Wendy up in her own room. 

“And don’t get out until you know the lesson like the back of your hand!” he yells, and softly closes the door; he does not want to alert the neighbours more than necessary. 

Wendy, who had been sulking in her bed, rises the moment she hears steps go down the stairs. She opens the window, and, taking advantage of the fact that it is not too high and that she is magic, she jumps.  

(Wendy was not usually a naughty child, you see, but. Every child has moments of sly, quiet rebellion; more so as a girl.) 

She falls gracefully on her bare feet (she had forgotten to put on shoes, whoops), and does a little bow to thank magic for their services in her continued survival. Then, she marches on to Diagon Alley; she doesn’t know it then, but she marches on to her greatest adventure, too. 

Wendy is just crossing the gates of the bar when she sees a light. At first, she thinks it’s just a figment of her imagination, but when it flashes two, three, four times, she knows what it was what she was seeing. 

_ A fairy! _ If she had said it out-loud, it would have been a gasp. 

Wendy had loved fairies since she was little, and, although that love was extinguishing by the disappointing knowledge that they weren’t real, the Hogwarts letter had rekindled her passion for the creatures. That is why she loses no time and pursues it. 

The little girl tries to be sneaky, but alas! Fairies have a way of knowing things, and this one is not different. When Wendy’s hand tries to grab her shiny body, the fairy—we’re going to call her Tinker Bell from now on. Tinker Bell  _ flies _ . 

Wendy is not one to give up, though, especially when she is passionate about something; she chases after the tiny being even when her feet start to ache and bleed, even when the landscape starts to become unknown, unexplored, full of green leaves and grass and trees. She, although she doesn’t know it at the time,  has crossed the second street at the right of Diagon Alley, and run on and on and on until she arrived to... 

Neverland, home of the outcasts. 

If the name seems beautiful, do not let it fool you, it’s not what it looks like. If it doesn’t, congratulations, you would have survived. Wendy, however, is too occupied with her chase to have an opinion on the name, and that’s why, when she was about to finally catch Tinker Bell, an arrow  _ swishes _ and slams on her chest. 

She falls to the floor and closes her eyes very, very slowly, lulled by the sounds of footsteps hurrying towards her, and the faraway chants of “I did it, I did it!” She tries to fight the urge to fall asleep, but it’s a losing battle.  

Only once our poor Wendy is in deep sleep do the little perpetrators appear to witness their crime. 

“That’s not a bird,” says the littlest of them, looking a little green. Tinker Bell had used the secret code that they developed to ask for help and tricked the boys. “That’s... a  _ girl _ .” He says the word like its in another language. 

While most of the boys eyes turn accusingly to the one who shot the arrow, Peter Pan’s, the cleverest of them all, turn to Tinker Bell. She waves sweetly, innocently, from where she’s sitting on top of the girls pointy nose. 

“Tink,” he says, puffing his chest and raising his chin; all a cocky boy’s tricks to make himself look scarier. “ Why have you told us it’s a bird when it’s clearly a girl?” 

Tinker Bell makes a noise that sounds, never more aptly named, like a bell. He roughly translates it as “she was an ass.” 

Peter, conveniently ignoring all the times he himself had done something just as, or even more, cruel, yells, “you’re an  _ ass _ .” (He learnt that word from a strange man asking for directions.) He turns on his heel, and says, “I don’t want to be your friend anymore!” 

He’s rudely giving his back to her, so that’s why he doesn’t see they way her face pinches distraughtly; if he had, maybe he would have changed his mind, too guilty to do otherwise. He doesn’t see it, so. There’s no use in crying over spilt milk. 

As it is, Peter goes to his boys, who are loudly cheering because the girl has stirred and is not dead after all, and claims, “let’s build a house around her, as an apology!”  

“Aye!“

And so, when Wendy wakes up, it is surrounded by a wooden house and seven nosy kids. 

She doesn’t feel fear at being in a strange place, or even fury at almost being killed by the very children who are around her (and yes, she knows they did it, for girls are more perceptive than boys; she sees the way they look at each other when they think she’s not looking, how they grimace when she winces at the pain in her ribs); no. She just feels fascination at the way those ablaze green eyes blink, curious, at her.

She sits up and calmly asks, “where am I?” There is not an ounce of fear in her voice.

They say, in varying tempos, that they’re in Neverland. 

“Who are you?” 

“We are the Lost Boys!” they also say. 

You see, Lost Boys are the magic children who didn’t receive a Hogwarts letter. No one knows why; some say it is because they were poor; some, that they were not wanted; Peter Pan’s personal favourite is that Hogwarts knew that they’d be too powerful for it to hold them. 

The truth is, no system is perfect, and Hogwarts is no exception. The Lost Boys are that one percent, those unfortunate souls. And now, you ask, why, pray tell, are there no Lost Girls? Well, as everyone knows, girls are much too clever for their letters to get lost. Hogwarts can’t afford it.

However, little Wendy does not care about all this unimportant information. She just nods, like she understands what they were, and moves on to the next question. “What happened?”

There’s a noise of feet shuffling. After a moment of pause, one of them pushes the littlest child forward. He looks to the floor and mumbles, “I… shot you.” Then, in a blink, he’s sobbing. Wendy is overcome by motherly instincts, but before she can do something, Peter speaks: 

“You were really lucky.” He shows her her… her kiss! “If you hadn’t had this ‘round your neck—hey!” Wendy, possessed by her selfishness, carelessly snatches her kiss off Peter’s grabby hands.

She examines it, her stomach heavy. It has a hole! What would that boy think now, if he saw her? 

She is shaken out of those thoughts by Peter’s insolent voice. “What’s your name?” he says, completely ignoring etiquette (remember, kids: you have to offer your name first!).

“Wendy Sara Moira Angela Darling,” she claims, a little too proudly. The kiss already lays forgotten at her feet.

“Wendy Sara Moira Angela Darling, I’m Peter Pan,” he presents himself, suddenly a bit insecure of his short name. Maybe, just maybe, he’s not as hopeless as we thought… “I have an offer for you.” He says it with the confidence of someone who has never been refused. “Be our mother.”

“Why?” Wendy blurts out. Then, she thinks of a possible reason, and adds, somewhat unhappy, “you don’t have a mother, do you?”

The truth is, Peter is a simple child, and he had just seen the way Wendy looked at the kids and thought,  _ I want that too _ . But, just as he is simple, he is a liar. “You’re right,” he says, and looks dejectedly to the floor.

“Oh...” Wendy covers her mouth with her hands.

The Lost Boys, seeing what their leader is doing, say, “we’ve never been tucked in...”

“Nor hugged...”

“Nor kissed good night...”

“Oh!” Wendy can’t hear anymore; she is scandalised. “Of course I’ll be your mother.” She takes Peter’s truly dirty hand, resolute. There’s a roar of cheers.

  
  


_ “Promise me!” seven-year-old Wendy says. “Promise me we’ll see each other again!” _

  
  


**II**

The summer of her second year, Wendy stomps her way to Neverland. Her mind is a whirl: why hasn’t Peter answered to her letters? Is she not good enough? Has he become bored with her? Has he forgotten her…  _ again _ ? 

Those questions will soon have an answer, for Wendy has just distinguished Peter in the distance.  He is giving her his back, probably playing violent hide-and-seek or violent tag or violent whatever, and that annoys her even more.

“Peter Pan!” she announces, like it’s a cuss

Said boy freezes. If Wendy could have seen his face, she would have witnessed the greatest deer-in-the-headlights expression ever. Sadly, she wasn’t, so she approached him fuming.

“Do you have an explanation?” she says, softly. Peter tilts his head, and opens his mouth— “You know what you did.” Peter closes his mouth, annoyed. After a second, he takes a deep breath and opens it again— “An explanation that is not a lie would be nice.”

“I wasn’t going to lie!” Peter lies. 

Wendy’s dry look conveys perfectly what she thinks about that. After a stare-off, Peter’s shiny green eyes drop to the floor, ashamed. Wendy hides a satisfied smile; he didn’t even need a chastisement!

He mumbles something unintelligible. Wendy says, “what did you say?”

Peter mumbles something again. There’s a pause, and then, he looks to the sky and, with his eyes firmly closed, he shouts, “I DON’T KNOW HOW TO READ!”

Wendy blinks. Peter is basically trembling on his spot, red-faced, as if the mere act of admitting he’s not perfect physically pains him (it does; his magic, too sensitive to his emotions, aches. He won’t say admit it even under threat of death, though).

Wendy has now two options: 1) berate Peter on not knowing something and ordering him to learn without ever moving a finger, like Mr. Darling did; or 2) teach him, really  _ really _ patiently. 

Of course, the decision is clear: “Peter!” she exclaims, scandalised. “Why didn’t you tell me before?” Honestly, our Wendy was a bit too much excited over this situation. “I will teach you.” 

Peter Pan, clever as he is, interprets that statement as the order it was, and so he nods. 

Of course, and it shouldn’t have surprised anyone, Peter learns  _ fast _ . By the start of Wendy’s third year, he’s already chickenscrawling letters. Wendy smiles when she receives the first one, all dirty and greasy and practically illegible. She ignores it when her roommates start wiggling her eyebrows, asking shrewdly who her significant other was.

  
  


_ The boy agrees. Wendy then has an idea... _

  
  


**III**

In her third summer, Wendy decides that if John is old enough to go to Hogwarts, he is old enough to know about this part of her world.

She whispers to him at night, “do you want to go to a magic place?”

John rolls over, pillow drenched with saliva. “Another one?” he mumbles, half-asleep.

“Yes!” When he makes no move to, well, move, Wendy takes his hand, almost impatiently. “Come  _ on _ !”

Why is Wendy in such a hurry? Well, Mr. and Mrs. Darling have gone out to dine in a fancy restaurant, which means they won’t be back until three and a half in the morning, because they will meet Mr. Darling’s boss there, and they’ll have to chat. Wendy’s parents are more restrictive with her going out times since the rise of that Hook fellow.

However, Wendy inevitably fell asleep while waiting for Nana to leave too, and now it’s two o’clock in the morning.  If they want to go, they’ll have to run!

After John is awake enough to let himself be tugged along, they crash into a problem: Michael. He is sitting up in bed, looking at them that way little brothers have, when they know you are about to do something bad and are ready to rat you out. 

Wendy, who has been on the receiving end of that look in many occasions, doesn’t wait for him to open his mouth (it’s all a trick to scream for Nana while making it look like he was going to strike a deal, she found out on one of them); she slyly offers, “do you want to come with us?”

Michael is six years old, and is therefore fickle. “Yes!” he screams, throwing his arms up. 

And that is why, when Wendy arrives to Neverland the first time that year, it is with two annoying boys duckling along. 

Peter Pan, who sees them from the shadows of a tree and knows nothing about their relationship, innocently thinks they are spies readying to kill Wendy. He does not think about how Wendy is speaking with them, or about how they are too close, too loud, too small to really be a threat. 

Smiling from ear to ear, like a cat eyeing its prey, he calls, Sargent-like, “Lost Boys!” 

They all align in a second. “Sir, yes, sir!”

He chuckles and rubs his hands together, like he’s seen the villains in Wendy’s ‘moo-vees’ do. “You know what you have to do...”

And that’s why, when Wendy and her brothers turn the corner, they run into the feral Lost Boys, with weapons raised and hungry eyes. 

They roar like lions, and sprint towards them.

John and Michael scream, scramble. However, they hesitate a second when they see Wendy isn’t moving—she’s trembling...—and that hesitation costs them dearly. One second later, they’re in the floor, their chasers on top of them.

“We’ve got them!” yells one of the Lost Boys, pulling a struggling John up by the arm like a trophy.

“Help!” Michael squirms in Tootles’s hold. “HELP!”

Wendy can’t hold it back anymore. You may call her cruel, you may call her heartless, but, when hearing her brothers’ panicked and desperate screams, she bursts out laughing, unlady-like. 

“Oh, boys, no!” she says, trying to recover her composure. “Those are my brothers!”

Peter, who has already gotten tired of military games, grabs her arm. “Who cares!” 

He drags her towards the thick of the forest, a part Wendy has never explored. She lets herself be dragged, ignoring, once again, her brothers’ pleas. They’re in good hands.

“Where are we going?”  she asks once she’s adjusted to Peter’s pace.

Peter doesn’t look at her. “To see an spectacle.”

Wendy hums like she understands, but she doesn’t, really. Even so, mothers always know anything, and Wendy has to, too.

That’s why, when they arrive to a dark lake, calm and peaceful and boring, Wendy doesn’t act disappointed (although she  _ is _ ), because she already knows that she was going to see that, obviously.

Wendy stays quiet, glancing at Peter from the corner of her eye.  He seems… impatient, pressing his lips together and tap-tap-tapping the ground with his feet.

...Should she ask? 

The idea leaves her mind in a moment. There’s a flash of light. And another one. And another. Another. Two more.

Suddenly, they’re surrounded by little glowing fairies. The lake reflects them, dimly lighting up both Peter and Wendy.

“Oh, Peter…” she murmurs, enraptured with the view.

Peter looks at her from the corner of his eye (her eyes shine like the lake before her, her hair is blown by the wind—), but soon focuses again on the fairies. His cheeks feel hot; he determinedly ignores it.

Hours later, when they arrive to the corner where her brothers were attacked, it is to see all boys singing like old friends around a fire.

“Wendy!” Michael (now without a t-shirt) shouts the moment he sees her. All heads turn towards them and their joint hands.

Trying  _ really _ hard not to notice their stares, Wendy remembers something, something very important:

“Oh no!” she says, covering her open mouth with dread. “Mom and Dad must’ve come back!”

 

_ “We should seal the pact with a kiss!” _

_ “A kiss? What’s that?”  _

 

**IV**

In her fourth summer, the first thing Wendy sees when she arrives to Neverland is the rare sight of a Peter Pan crying.

“What’s the matter?” she asks, worried. Is this because of her? Does he feel abandoned? Has she failed in her labour as a mother? “Why are you crying?”

Peter’s silhouette disappears and appears in the matter of a second. It’s something his magic does, sometimes, “Uh, hi, Wendy.” He fiercely rubs his eyes with his dirty right arm, and turns to face her. “What brings you here?” he says casually.

Wendy’s lips do  _ not _ twitch. It’s just… There’s—There’s a smudge of dirt across Peter’s entire face!

“You know what brings me here,” she answers instead, voice perfectly even. Once the amusement has passed, she asks again, “why are you crying?”

“Tinks is lost! I can’t find her!” he grunts, and then, “and I wasn’t crying!”

Wendy arches one perfectly depilated eyebrow and stares at him right in his red and puffy eyes.

“...That’s right, my mistake.” Wendy says after a second. “How silly I am sometimes.”

“You  _ are _ ,” sniffs Peter. He honestly believes she didn’t notice. Oh, the innocence of a child.

“Well,” Wendy changes the topic to avoid an uncomfortable silence. “Who’s Tinker Bell?”

“A fairy.  _ My _ fairy.” He throws his hands up in the air. “I don’t know what happened with her!”

And that was true. Peter, after turning his back to Tinker Bell, had already forgotten her. However, this morning, he saw a childish drawing of her (well, more or less), and the memories came crashing down on him. Some memories, at least.

“We’ll find her,” says Wendy reassuringly, and feels a pang in her heart when she thinks how much she sounds like her late mother (here’s a secret: she had died three months ago, in a Pirate attack. Wendy doesn’t like to talk about it). “Don’t worry.”

(Here’s another secret: Wendy didn’t cry, even as they lowered her mother’s body to the ground. She was now the woman of the house, and had to be as strong as the previous one.)

“...Really?” Peter mutters, the sound muffled by his knees. He is not used to receiving help.

“Really.” She says it slowly, pronouncing each syllable carefully.

They are all night looking for the missing fairy. No matter how much Peter looked under the rocks, or how much Wendy yelled Tinker Bell’s name, the fairy cannot be found.

At least, until, at three in the morning, Peter collapses on the highest branch of Neverland and hears a squeak. Wendy, who is at the tree’s base, also can see a flash of light flying from under him.

“Tinker Bell!” they gasp simultaneously, and Peter throws himself to catch the elusive fairy. 

She tries and tries and  _ tries _ to escape, but alas! Her efforts are in vain, and soon he has her firmly trapped under his fist. After much struggling, she petulantly crosses her arms, pouting.

(Even though she acts like she’s not happy she’s been found, the truth is this: Tinker Bell, after her and Peter’s fight, spend these three years hiding in trees, under rocks, waiting for him to find her.

The truth is this: she’s  _ ecstatic _ .)

“Aha!” exclaims Peter, grinning widely. He moves her closer to his face; so close she can see meat stuck between his teeth. “You’ve been a bad girl, Tinks!”

Peter then proceeds to scold her like a parent to their little kid, finger raised and everything. 

(Wendy thinks, watching from afar, that he seems a tiny teeny little bit happy, too.)

 

_ “You don’t know?” _

_ “Well.” He opens his hand expectantly. “I’ll know when you give it to me.” _

 

**V**

The summer of her fifth year, Wendy turns the corner to Neverland and feels a lurch on her chest when she sees Tiger Lily and Peter Pan together, laughing and having fun. Without her.

Who is Tiger Lily? Well, she is the heiress of the American natives of the zone. Unlike the Lost Boys, they did receive their Hogwarts letter, but refused to go because they felt Hogwarts didn’t teach about their culture well enough.

Instead, their parents, friends and/or acquaintances teach them the magic their ancestors used, both as a token of times long past and as a way to be unpredictable. And that is true—while Wendy has never seen them fight or use any variant of magic, I have. They don’t even use wands, because they prefer to communicate wordlessly with their environment. In fact, they’re the ones who taught Peter to speak with the stars.

Ah, but I digress. Let’s come back to the story.

Wendy clears her throat a bit too close to the happy couple. They turn their heads towards her, still smiling.

“Oh, hi, Wendy!” says Tiger Lily, always so very nice. “How’re you?”

“I’m fine, Lily.” Wendy says it like she’s talking to a child. Immediately, she realises how rude she’s being, and offers, with a slightly forced smile, “how about you?”

Tiger Lily looks at Wendy right in the eyes, holds that smile a few eerie seconds. “I’m well.” Another beat of silence. “Oh, but I’ve just remembered that I have something to do.” She nods towards them. “See you later, Pete.”

“Later.” When Tiger Lily is no more than a dot in the distance, Peter turns to Wendy, smiling like the eight layers of silent interactions didn’t happen.

Wendy smiles back almost unwillingly, and thinks, lovingly, that if she doesn’t say anything, this idiot boy will never get it.

Very very gently, Wendy moves her hand closer to Peter’s cheek until it cups it. Then, even more gently than before, to give him time to step back if he doesn’t want it, she presses her lips against the right corner of his, and plucks a kiss.

It’s a chaste kiss, chaste and unwavering. When she reluctantly draws away, she is unsurprised to find (liar, she is, a bit) Peter’s green eyes half-lidded, unfocused and bright. His mouth, slightly parted, pulls into a frown as he realises the kiss has ended.

Then, before Wendy has time to react, Peter  _ grabs _ Wendy’s arm and pulls her to him, indelicately, without asking, without doubting, like someone who is not used to be rejected. He slams his mouth against hers.

When they separate for good, Wendy doesn’t ask  _ did you like it? _ or  _ what are we now? _ or  _ do you love me? _ Instead, she says, “how was your year?”, because Peter is like a street cat; show too much affection and it’ll run away.

Peter answers a second too late. “Eh, fine.”

They start walking towards Neverland, chatting as if nothing had happened. However, there’s a bubble on the air, surrounding them, and just when Wendy thinks it’s never going to burst, it does.

“John?” she gasps, eyebrows going up past her hairline. “You and Tiger Lily—uh, eh…” She suddenly feels like an intruder, but she stubbornly keeps on talking. “Since when are you together?”

John’s mouth leaves its certainly nice spot in Tiger Lily’s mouth to open like a fish’. He looks just as embarrassed as Wendy feels. “Uuuuuuuuuh,” he says.

Tiger Lily’s snort turns into full-blown laughter when all eyes land on her.

 

_ After a second of deliberation, Wendy deposits a thimble on his hand. “Here.” She smiles. _

_ The boy blinks. “Well, then, have this.” _

_ Wendy takes the acorn and holds it close to her chest fondly. _

_ “Wendy!” her father shouts in the distance. _

_ The girl turns to leave, but stops mid-turn. Their eyes linger on the other’s. “See you,” she says, softly. _

_ “Yeah.” _

 

**VI**

The summer of her sixth year, Wendy comes to Neverland to find a sulking Peter, flying a bit too close to the floor.

When she approaches, curious, she is met with Peter’s thoughtful expression: lips twisted to the left, scrunched nose, half-closed eyes. All in all, it was a really funny expression, everyone always said, which was why Peter almost never thought about anything. 

She sits down next to him and asks, “is something the matter?”

Instead of answering her, Peter takes his pan flute out of his pants’s rubber band and starts to play. Now, Wendy’s really getting worried; he only does that when he’s thinking about the inevitability of the passage of time and growing up.

As you probably know, Peter Pan wishes to be a child forever. In another world, he probably would have achieved his dream, even though it came at the cost of the loss of every person he ever loved. 

This, however, is not such world.

(At least, not yet.)

“Can I do something to make you feel better?” she says, not unkindly.

Only the unsteady notes of a half-broken instrument answer her. After a beat, she holds in a sigh and lies down on the floor, right shoulder brushing with Peter’s left one, and closes her eyes.

Peter finally answers when Wendy is almost asleep. “What would you do if…” His voice startles her, but not enough to let it show on her face. She locks eyes with Peter for a moment. He looks away from her, to the horizon. “...Nevermind.”

Wendy, clever child she is, does mind, but doesn’t press the issue. She just closes her eyes again and does  _ not _ open them again, even when she feels a hand grasping hers or hears soft snores.

(She can’t quite hold back a smile, though.)

 

_ However, they did not see each other until much, much later, as you must have already guessed. _

_ Wendy was punished for being late, and could not leave her room for a good two weeks. By that time, she had already forgotten where they met; she didn’t find him. _

_ Soon, she began to forget about him too. The only thing that remains about that meeting is a faint, soft memory and a kiss to her neck. _

 

**VII**

The summer of her seventh and last year, Wendy comes to Neverland stomping her foot against the pavement and tightly clutching a piece of paper in her shaking fist.

She radiates magic. So much, than when she touches something, it’s propelled away. Thankfully, her hair is firmly stuck in her head, and her head is firmly stuck to her body, otherwise it would not be with her anymore. The way it’s flying around, getting on her face, is quite a clear indicator of that.

However, minor inconveniences like those can’t stop her. She is  _ furious _ .

When she sees Peter Pan, surrounded by his Lost Boys, her blue eyes flash dangerously, a storm brewing behind them. She accelerates her step and raises her voice.

“PETER PAN!”

Every single one of the boys stills. They slowly turn to look at her, but Wendy ignores them. Instead, after clutching it a bit more tightly, she throws the paper to Peter’s face.

It’s paper, so it should have drifted harmlessly towards the floor, but Wendy is a girl, and, more importantly, Wendy is magic, so in a blink it’s on his face, pushing him with a surprising strength.

Peter falls backwards. The Lost Boys, after a brief second of hesitation, gather their wits and scram, leaving their poor boss alone to his fate. Said boy grabs the paper on his face and stares at it with a dumb expression.

It’s a newspaper. The titular says “LOST BOYS; HOOK HAS A NEW ALLY?”.

“I hope you have a  _ good _ explanation,” Wendy says in an icy voice.

And she hopes, she really does. She hopes that he says it’s just a misunderstanding, that he doesn’t know who Hook is, that he hasn’t just gone and allied with her mother’s killer.

Peter’s green eyes darken, and Wendy’s heart beats so strongly, so loudly that she almost doesn’t hear his answer.

“We made a pact.” After a second, he shrugs, careless on the outside but careful on the inside. Wendy’s eyes glint.

She grits out, “and, pray tell, what was it?” She’s not screaming by pure force of will; as her mother always said, to win an argument you have to keep calm.

There’s a silence.

Peter is looking at her with a mixture of distrust and disappointment. Once upon a time, the sight would have broken her heart. Now, though, she couldn’t care less. She is merciless when she presses for an answer. “Well?”

He seems to come to a decision. “He will help me—no, us, to stop growing up!”  Peter’s flat mouth turns into a wide grin, and he blurts out, “we’ll be children forever, Wendy!”

She is struck speechless.

He—

He.

Wendy’s hair suddenly drops back to its usual state. Her eyes stop shining. Her shoulders relax.

“You know what, Peter?” she says, voice really, really soft. Peter, from his position on the floor, looks at her, at her raised chin, at her calm smile. “I think you’ve already got what you wished for.”

And with that, she turns around and leaves Neverland, knowing as she did that they’ll never see each other again. Not on the same side, anyway.

Neither says goodbye.


End file.
